Rafiel parked behind the diner, and pulled out his cell phone. "Yeah, McKnight?" as soon as McKnight answered.
"Yeah?" McKnight answered, cautiously.
"Two things. Look up any records for John Wagner and also . . . I don't know how you can do this, but . . ." He reasoned quickly that, of course, Dante Dire might have used another name. But he couldn't fly, so he presumably had to use some means of transport—airplanes. Even if private. And he would rent places. And while he could use another name, it was Rafiel's guess that most people didn't change all that often. Most shifters, either. They got comfy with a name and kept it, he guessed. "Check up on Dante Dire," he said. "Particularly anything having to do with Hawaii, and also when he might have come to town. Any place in Colorado he might have been."
"Dante . . . ?"
"Dante Dire," Rafiel spelled it.
"Who . . . ?"
"Just someone who's been around a lot, and I wonder . . ." He had a moment of fear. What if McKnight stumbled on something that—He stopped. That what? Tipped him to the fact that there were shapeshifters? Not likely. Rafiel suspected that for the average person it would take having their noses rubbed in it. In fact, they would have tumbled on to what was happening long ago if it weren't so. "He's just suspicious," he said. "Nothing definite, so don't break any laws, but check up on him, okay?"
There was a sound from the other side that might have been assent, and Rafiel said, "Right. I'll call back." And hung up. He cut his ignition and got out of the truck. Halfway through stepping down, he saw something through the snow.
He would never be able to swear to what it was. A dog, a bear, something rounding the building, or just—perhaps—a shadow. But he thought Dire, and having thought it, he followed the suspicious shadow around the building to the front.
And stopped, because in front of the building, leaning against the lamppost was the blond girl from the newspaper. There was something odd about her, but he couldn't put his finger on it, and he said, "I beg your pardon, you—"
And then it hit him. His human nose, not as sharp as his lion nose, was nonetheless acute enough to catch the smell of blood—the smell of death. Closer, closer, he saw that the girl was pale, dead—her eyes staring unseeing straight ahead. But she'd been propped up against the lamppost, and her clothes had been put back on. And she couldn't have been dead very long, because there was a steady drip-drip-drip of blood down the front of her clothes, from beneath her ski jacket.
For a moment he stood horrified, but his mind was working, behind it all. Dire. He was sure Dire was involved. Oh, he couldn't have done it now. No way that could have happened. But he had to be involved—somehow.
In his mind it all added up. Dante had killed the girl earlier, then . . . Then led him here. Like a gigantic joke. A joke perpetrated by an unfeeling, uncaring, ancient creature.
Like the shark murders—it would be just Dire's idea of a joke, to set it up, somehow, so that he could push into the tank guys who had been dallying with one of the female employees. The first time they'd seen him was around the aquarium. Perhaps he had a way in all along. Why shouldn't he? Rafiel had managed to get keys easily enough. And it would amuse some thing like Dire to create the impression of a shark shifter and see how they reacted.
With numbed fingers, Rafiel had—somehow—retrieved his phone from inside his jacket. He hit the redial button, staring at the corpse of the blond girl. "McKnight. Send the meat wagon and . . . and come along. There's been a . . . death. In front of The George. And get someone to check the visitor book at the aquarium. Find out if Dante Dire was there . . . anytime in the last month."